


Eyes Untainted [ON HOLD]

by coconutcluster



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: (Again eventually), Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Prinxiety, M/M, also lots of violence, its gonna be long guys, logicality - Freeform, probably a lot, probably some good ol Logicality, seriously, so be careful, some good ol, spy AU, there is death and pain and a lot of sadness, there will be mentions of torture and abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-05-31 13:13:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15120146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coconutcluster/pseuds/coconutcluster
Summary: People have been going missing for a while, and the team is doing their best to find the group behind it - but when the motive seems to hit closer to home than they thought, it proves difficult for everyone to come out unscathed.A very dark Spy!AU with a crappy description.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, so I had this idea on my tumblr, so you can read more about it there (@coconut-cluster) if you'd like, but this is gonna be a long one, guys. Enjoy!

  It’s been twenty four years, and Roman Kingsley still hated the rain.

  Twenty four years with Florida summers, no less, so he’d grown well accustomed to watching the rain fall outside his window, but he never once enjoyed it (give or take a few times where he got to collect rainwater in mini mason jars with his mom, but that was the only exception). It was dreary and lifeless and the exact opposite of everything he would rather watch from a window - fireworks, for instance, were one of his favorite spectacles, and he’d take them over falling water any day. 

  It didn’t help, of course, that he was also _not_ behind a window at that exact moment, but stuck sprinting down the hallways of a cavernous warehouse on the outskirts of Miami, where the rain managed to snake through every crack in the ceiling (which there were quite a lot of) and, _somehow_ , into his boots; running through a warehouse was uncomfortable enough. Running through a warehouse with socks wetter than a drunk sailor and his sirenic lover was indubitably worse.

  The rain in his shoes was far from his biggest problem at the moment, but he did like focusing on complaining instead of the actual issue. It kept his heart rate lower.

  A bang echoed somewhere else in the building, somewhere far off; Roman put a hand to his headset, muttering a quick, “We good?” into the mic, his eyes tracing the air as he waited, his footsteps still thudding relentlessly against the wet cement.

  “Yeah,” a small voice pierced the static after a moment. “Just some old boxes on a belt. Sorry for the scare.”

  Roman didn’t bother to respond as he turned down yet another empty hallway; he peeked into each open room - nothing, nothing,  _ nothing _ . He was getting real tired of nothing. 

  Then, at the end of the hallway, a door was locked.

  His stomach jumped as he saw it, a beacon of… well, of  _ something _ , and that was enough for him. He approached the door, slowing his steps to a tread and pressing his ear to the metal; he couldn’t hear anything over the pounding of rain against the roof, but it was the only lead he’d found in the metal hellhole so far, and he was more than willing to follow it.

  Taking a step back, he eyed the doorknob, and he kicked. 

  The door wasn’t as sturdy as it seemed; it swung open immediately, leading Roman to question whether or not it had actually even been locked, but the contents of the room evaporated any doubts he had as soon as he stepped in.

   On the ground was a single, motionless body.

   It was a girl in her early twenties, dressed in a simple black t-shirt and leggings - no shoes, no accessories. Her eyes were closed, her face on full display by the blunt-ended haircut splayed out around her head. Her right arm and exposed feet were covered in red sores and peeling skin with spots of black, branching all the way up to the bottom of her face, gnarled and flaking. 

  “Damn it,” Roman muttered. “ _ Damn _ it.” He strode towards the body, lowering himself to one knee at its side and studying the girl, reaching his hand out to graze his fingertips across her eyelids. He pulled gently at the skin to see her irises.

  Pure white.

  Roman yanked his hand back and stood, resisting the urge to kick something, to yell into the buzzing air of the room. Instead, he jammed his finger into the button on his headset. “Cinci. Get Pops out here, now.” 

  The static crackled and stopped. “What’d you find?” a deeper voice called into his ear; Roman squeezed his eyes shut.

  “Not what we wanted.”

  “What did you  _ find _ , Blueblood?”

  “A body.” The voice on the other end stopped suddenly, and Roman was almost happy that he had managed to dislodge their authority, even for just a moment. “A girl, alone. Looks like frostbite.”

  Another pause. “And the eyes?”

  “All white.”

  A sigh echoed in his ears. “I’m sending Pops now.”

  “Got it.” Roman took his hand away from the ear piece and stared at the body at his feet. She was young, and Roman could see lines in her face from smiling, the makeup smudged under eyes from who-knows-how-long ago, freckles dotting her arms in between the patches of black and red. 

   He kneeled down again, his eyes caught by a glimmer on her blistered hand; it was a gold band on her ring finger, set under a single, sparkling diamond, a real one that glinted under the merciless fluorescent lighting that loomed above them. Roman collapsed from his crouched position - how long had this girl been missing? Who had been left in her wake?

  His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of two pairs of footsteps carrying to the doorway behind him.

  “Roman?” the same small voice from earlier called into the room. “We didn’t see the group in the west win- oh.” 

 Roman’s shoulders fell, and he squeezed his eyes shut again, turning away from the body to take a deep breath and regard the lanky teenager in the doorway. He could just see the identical boy at his side, right past the doorjamb. “There’s no group, Missy. Just another dupe.”

  “She’s dead,” Missy said; not a question, but a forced observation as the boy’s tan skin went pale and he ran a hand through already-messy brown curls. “They’re really not here?”

  “Nope.” Roman’s eyes drifted to his watch, its screen bright with a mission report on a group of missing persons supposedly in the warehouse. He clicked  _ Exit _ . 

  “Is Pat on the way?” Roman heard his footsteps start up again, further into the room.

  “Go home, Missy.”

  “What?” Missy froze, his face pinched with confusion, brow low and mouth a taut line. “Ro, we have-”

  “Go  _ home _ . Take Presley and get back to HQ.  _ Now _ ,” he added as Missy just stood there with a deep frown. 

  “Okay,” the boy whispered. He turned on his heel and marched out of the room without another word, grabbing his twin’s arm on the way. Just before he disappeared from Roman’s view, he stopped and glanced over his shoulder. “Be safe, Ro.”

  “Can do, Buckaroo,” Roman muttered without much attention, and Missy was gone.

  Roman stared at the ground, his hand tracing the uneven grooves of the cement, the scars from years of wear by boots and wheels alike. His eyes kept trailing back to the body in front of him; he was lost, wading through his mind, scenarios running through his head at the speed of light. 

  The girl going missing.

_ “Gone,” he heard through the door - it wasn’t really a word, not like that. It was more of a choke, a guttural exhale, filled to the brim with untold horrors.  _

  Her family realizing.

_ He’d never seen so many people crying in one room. Hell, he’d never seen his father cry at all. _

  How it could have been stopped.

_ “I thought you were watching!” The screams had been going on for a few hours. He didn’t fully know what they were arguing about, but he was doing his best to piece the broken shards together. “You promised you’d watch!” _

  What happened to her after she disappeared.

_ He didn’t like nighttime. He used to - the stars were so pretty - but then it started to hurt. _

  What killed her-  _ who _ killed her. 

  Roman looked down at her hand again, at the sparkling diamond and glimmering band that told more than she’d ever be able to again, and noticed its position on the floor - or, rather, above the floor; her hand was draped over a small, crumpled paper, her slim fingers covering its edges from first sight. He reached out, slowly, carefully, and pulled it out, grabbing a protruding edge so as not to disturb the lifeless limb from its last position, and unfolded the paper.

  It was blank, save for the intricate neon eye drawn in the direct center of the blue lined sheet. 

  “Oh, for fu-”

  “Kiddo? You okay?”

  Roman jumped, snapping his attention to the doorway where Patton stood, his gray cardigan pulled tight around his body for once in an effort to shield him from the rain outside. His round glasses were spotted with water, but his hands were too busy lugging around the heavy black case that Roman knew was filled with medical supplies to wipe them off.

 “Yeah,” Roman managed, crumpling the paper back into a ball and dropping it onto the ground behind his leg, where Patton couldn’t see. “I’m good.” Patton just watched him for a moment, his round brown eyes sharp; Roman cleared his throat. “This is her,” he said, jerking his head towards the body. 

  “I figured,” Patton sighed. He shuffled to Roman’s spot beside the girl, dropping the bag with an exaggerated groan. “Jeez, I really gotta put wheels on that thing.” He tried a smile in Roman’s direction, but it collapsed too quickly to really have an effect; instead, he kneeled down beside the body and cocked his head to the side, his eyes shining with pity and his voice hushed as he said, “Poor girl. You didn’t deserve this.” 

  He reached out and hovered his hand above hers for a second before taking a deep breath, reaching back to the leather case at his hip. He unzipped it and extracted a camera. 

  “Stage four frostbite on the arms and feet, stage three on the neck,” he muttered from behind the device, standing to snap pictures from different angles. “Some light bruising on the wrists- oh. Um, no, that’s… that’s actually very heavy bruising on the wrists. Probably some kind of metal binding- handcuffs, maybe.”  He leaned in and glanced to Roman, his freckled face practically green as he swallowed, and he ducked immediately back behind his camera screen to get more photos. “No lacerations like the last one, though. Can you get her eyes? Gently, please,” he added as Roman leaned towards the girl’s face; Roman pulled again at her eyelids, but he didn’t miss Patton’s flinch. “Right, thank you. All white this time? Huh. I guess that’s still unusual, but it’s awfully plain for them-” He flinched again. “That sounded bad. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re fine, Pat.” Roman glanced at the albino irises, his stomach turning; he chided himself internally - he should be used to it now, he should know how to compartmentalize it, but the eyes always made him feel sick. “There’s nothing on her eyes this time, either.”

  “Oh,” Patton said, his eyebrows shooting up, and he leaned close to her face again. “Well, right you are, kiddo-”

  “Pat, I’m the same age as you.”

  “That’s not important. What’s important is that you have a very good point - no insertion markings or stains on the cornea,” he muttered, snapping a close up of the girl’s eyes. “Interesting.” Patton lowered the camera, and he was faced with a dead girl barely two inches away - he leapt back and stood in a single, fluid motion, rubbing at his cardigan like it had been doused in dirt, his lips pursed. Roman could see the tremor in his wrists, and the smell permeating around them hit him quite suddenly. “Well, me and Logan’ll look over these later. Do you need a ride back to the house?” 

  “Oh, n-” Roman stopped - that’s right, he sent Missy and Presley back with the car. “Yeah. That’d be great.”

  “Perfect!” Patton’s smile was back, suddenly too wide for his round face, and his eyes were trained carefully on Roman instead of the ground beside him. “Could you grab the kit for me? I’m not sure I have the muscles to lug it back to the car.” Roman just nodded, grabbing the bag as Patton wrung his wrists and bounced eagerly on his toes. “Thank youuuu!”

  They started out of the room, and Roman made himself face forward the whole time. 

_ Think of the rain, Roman. _

 

__ HQ was quiet, much to Roman’s surprise; the twins were nowhere in sight as he and Patton walked in, and Logan was sitting on the couch with a book in the living room, his mouth its ever-straight line. Patton brightened. 

  “Lo, we got the pictures,” he gushed, dragging his bag over to the couch, “and you won’t believe-”

  “Roman, can I see you in my office?”

  Roman turned to the voice, a single eyebrow raised. “Already? I just got back; I haven’t even broken anything yet.” Thomas looked unamused in the doorway of his office.

  “Now, please.”

  Roman sent a curious look to Logan, but the man just shrugged as Patton watched with wide eyes. He turned back to the office and blew a tuft of hair out of his eyes, striding through the open door with his shoulders back and head high. 

  “You said you found a girl at the warehouse,” Thomas said, his voice melting the words into a statement more than a question as soon as Roman stepped into the room and closed the door behind himself. 

  That was not how Roman expected the conversation to start. “..yes?”    

  “And I’m assuming the eye was there.”

  “Yes,” Roman repeated, thinking back to the crumpled piece of paper with the doodled insignia. Thomas sighed, his head falling into his hands. “Why?”

  Thomas didn’t respond for a moment. “There was a bank robbery across town, just thirty minutes ago,” he muttered through his fingers, running his hands back through his feathery brown hair. He must have noticed Roman’s unimpressed expression, because he added in a voice that rang with something so undoubtedly  _ tired _ , “No money was taken, but a bank teller went missing. They found a drawing of a bright yellow eye on his desk.”

  Roman froze in his spot by the door, his boss’s words sinking in, and his hand curled into a fist before he could stop it. “They played us.”

  He found a dead body today, and he’d be finding another one very soon. 

  “Yeah,” Thomas said, his tone acidic. “You could say that.” 

  Roman stared at the carpeted floor as his fingernails dug into his palm. “Why didn’t the police get there before he disappeared?” he managed through grit teeth.

  “I don’t know,” Thomas said honestly. “You know we don’t work with the department, Roman. It’s not our job to question them, it’s our job to find the people they miss.”

 “Yeah, and we’re doing so magnificently with that, aren’t we?”

 “I don’t need the attitude.”

 “It’s true!” Roman yelled, throwing his hands into the air. “We haven’t found one person, Thomas! Not  _ living _ , anyway. How exactly are we supposed to accomplish anything when we have a success rate of absolutely  _ nothing _ ?!”

  “Calm down-”

  “ _ Don’t  _ tell me that. I’m getting real frustrated with this cat and mouse game-”

  “You think I’m not?” Thomas cut in, bracing his palms against the desk top as he stood, meeting Roman’s gaze. “You think I enjoy this? I want to find these people as much as you do, Roman, but we have to be patient. Every failure is a new lead.”

  “Every failure is another dead body,” Roman growled.

  “We’re getting closer,” Thomas said, and Roman noticed the lilac crescents under his eyes for the first time since he’d entered the office. “I need you to understand that.” Roman just crossed his arms, dropping his burning gaze back to the carpet. “Roman.”

  “You got it,  _ captain _ ,” he spat, turning back to the door without another word. Just as he put a hand on the doorknob, Thomas called out to him.

  “I need you to pick up a delivery from Carrigan tomorrow-” 

  Roman slammed the door.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roman, still fuming after Thomas's disregard for the near-complete stop their leads on the Oculi case have come to, takes any excuse to get out of HQ for a little bit - which happens to be a supply pick-up from the "merchant" across town.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright guys, I'm SO sorry this has taken so long; I've just been out of it the last week and a half, and my focus all but disappeared completely. This isn't nearly long enough to have been worth the wait, but I'm pretty happy with the result that DID come out. Again, I'm really sorry but I have no self control and time has drained from my reality. Enjoy!

  The morning had been heavy with silence as soon as Roman entered the kitchen. 

  Though breakfast had been ready for an hour and everyone else was talking at the table by the time he came around the corner, their voices fell to a hush as Roman’s darkened eyes met Thomas’s. He sat with a dull thud in his chair at the end of the table without a word, his arms crossed tightly over his chest; his hair, already brushed and smoothed down despite the early hours, fell onto his forehead and into his eyes like an angsty teenager’s after a fit.

  Patton cleared his throat. 

  “Morning, kiddo,” he said with a bright smile, coughing again as Roman nodded tightly. “I made breakfast!” He waved a hand at the plate of only-slightly burnt waffles in the center of the table, half gone but still untouched on the dishes in front of everyone (except for Logan’s - he seemed to have no issue swallowing the charred breakfast, either by force of sheer will or the whim to soothe Patton’s worried glances). “They’re chocolate chip! There’s strawberries in the fridge, too, if you want ‘em.”

  “Thank you, Patton,” Roman said, but he made no move to reach for a waffle; instead, he leaned back in his chair, his gaze trained on the tabletop with careful intensity. The room fell back into silence - even Missy didn’t speak, and Presley’s hands stayed still as they rested on the tabletop.

  Thomas’s fork fell to his plate with a sharp  _ clink _ . “There’s a package ready at Carrigan’s,” he started, his voice even but laced with something more strained as he watched Roman, an eyebrow raised at the other boy’s stoic expression. “We need the supplies by tomorrow evening, so you should probably-”

  “Get it today,” Roman finished. His jaw was clenched, and he glanced at the dishes around the table; the air in the room was warm with the smell of batter, and Roman was tempted to smile - Patton and Presley were both early birds with him, and the scent that tickled his nose that morning reminded him of the times they sat and talked before the sun had risen - but he’d failed to even sleep the night before; the images of a frostbitten corpse in his eyelids paired with Thomas’s thinly veiled annoyance were grating on his nerves more than he cared to admit. 

  The legs of his chair screeched against the tile floor as he stood. 

  Five pairs of eyes met his in an instant, but Roman just straightened the edges of his jacket sleeves and pulled back his shoulders, turning on his heel to make out of the kitchen.

  “Where…” Patton trailed off, and Logan put a hand on his shoulder. 

  “I’ll just pick the stuff up now,” Roman muttered over his shoulder. Guilt blossomed in his chest at the bated silence behind him - he glanced back at the messy-haired man at the table with a smile as sincere as he could make it. “Sorry, Pat, I’m not hungry right now. Save some for me?”

  Missy and Presley’s amber eyes fell to the table, and Logan just shook his head- 

  But Patton’s face brightened the slightest bit, a crooked smile pulling at his lips. “Of course.”

 

  The week-long downpour had lessened to a drizzle by the time Roman made his way across town; the drops’ faint pattering against the car’s roof was drowned out by showtunes blasting from the radio - he was a sucker for West Side Story - and the tension had all but drained from his shoulders as he hummed along. 

  He turned the rounding corner, onto an uneven cobblestone road lined with looming black street lights and old iron park benches. Pigeons pecked at empty ground in front of decrepit apartment buildings; Roman parked the car in front of a house with peeling powder-blue paint and curtained windows to watch them, their wings flapping uselessly against the breezeless air and beaks closing around questionable pebbles. They dropped glass shards and picked them back up immediately, over and over, and Roman wished he’d brought actual food to deter the birds from the scoring repetition.  

  He stepped out of the car as the birds fled to the lamp posts in a flurry of panicked coos, and he sauntered to the door, smiling at a pair of children jump-roping further down the sidewalk. They stared back with wide, unblinking eyes, but the smaller one - a little girl with a messy blonde braid and stained overalls - grinned and waved, before the boy next to her smacked her arm; whether he wanted to get back to their game or didn’t want to get caught interacting with a stranger, Roman couldn’t tell (although the pair’s side eyes at the window directly to their left narrowed the possibilities). He simply nodded and went to the door ahead of him.

  The knocker was surprisingly shiny. Roman always admired the old fashioned style of the iron handle, curved and embellished with engravings and tiny flowers at its edges, so much so that he was hesitant to touch it, to potentially rust it - as it turned out, he didn’t have to.

  “What do you want?”

  The door swung open to reveal a boy with purple fringe shifting in front of his eyes, a black and purple flannel over his stick-thin figure, its sleeves pushed up to his elbows. He stared at Roman with a single eyebrow raised.

  “I have a delivery to pick up,” Roman responded, leaning against the doorframe as he plastered a smile on his face. “Happy to see me?”

  “No. Get your stuff and go, thanks.”

  “ _ Well _ .” Roman put a hand to his chest dramatically, feigning offense as Virgil Carrigan stepped aside to let him through into his apartment. “I come all this way only to be rejected? Come on, Moony, that’s harsh, even for you.”

   Virgil gave a dry chuckle, his eyebrow still raised. “You live, like, ten minutes away.”

  “And?”

  “And you drive further away to get coffee. I’m not exactly impressed.”

  Roman just hummed in response, glancing around the apartment as he was led further in; the walls were all a dark blue, save for the kitchen, which was painted bright yellow (Roman didn’t miss the trio of succulents on the windowsill, obviously well cared for - his favorite was the cactus with a fiery orange bloom on its round head). The tabletops were empty, but he caught sight of a few posters in what looked to be Virgil’s bedroom, the door cracked open the smallest bit. 

  “So,” Roman started.

  “No,” Virgil cut him off, stopping in front of a black door that was scuffed around its frame and glancing over his shoulder to scowl at Roman. “No witty remarks or whatever else you think comes out when you talk, just get your stuff and get out. I don’t have the time or patience to deal with you today.”

  Roman fake-gasped again as Virgil opened the door. “You keep saying these things!” A tiny smile pulled at his lips, but Virgil remained stoic, and Roman cocked his head at him, a pout drawn across his face. “You’re really hurting me, Virge-”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “I don’t think this is the kind of talk our friendship should be built on-”

  “We’re  _ not  _ friends.”

  “Well, not with that attitude, we’re not.”

  And Virgil almost laughed - there was a hint of a chuckle in his sigh, anyway - as he opened the door and made his way across the room; Roman always assumed it was the boy’s office, complete with a set of three monitors and a complicated keyboard that Roman couldn’t focus on enough to analyze. 

  Virgil reached his desk and leaned over, searching through a few different boxes on its surface for whichever one he was looking for, before straightening up and shoving the smallest one at Roman. 

  “That should be everything,” he said; he paused and stared at the ground as his cognac eyes traced the wood for a memory. “Except for the jumpdrive. The files wouldn’t transfer, so I’m still working on it, but everything else is in there.”

  Roman reached out for it, but his mind caught up a second later, and he froze, his hands still hovering around the box’s sides as he said, “What files?”

  “Charisma Stohl,” Virgil said, his eyebrow raised again as if the answer should have been obvious. Roman raced to recognize the name - it hit him suddenly. He grabbed the box before his hands could curl into fists. 

  “Burn victim?” he asked, his voice tight. 

  “I think so.” Virgil sank into the rolling chair at his desk, and a smirk crept onto his face as he watched Roman silently fume. “What? That hit a nerve or something?”

  “No.”

  Virgil let out a sharp exhale through his nose. “For someone who’s so dramatic,” he continued, grabbing a chewed pen and twirling it in his fingers, “you’re pretty bad at lying.”

  “I was just told we were dropping that case,” Roman said through gritted teeth.

  Virgil paused. “The case? I thought you guys followed, like, one general case. The eyes, or whatever.”

  “Oculi,” Roman corrected. “And how did you know about that?”

  “I see everything.” He glanced at Roman’s frown and shrugged. “I read a lot. Between you and the  _ rats _ , I like to research.”

  “I thought you liked impartiality,” Roman snapped, but regretted it as soon as he saw Virgil flinch and turn to his computers instead.

  “Impartial doesn’t necessarily mean ignorant,” Virgil said, his voice weighted with careful control. “Besides, my job is none of your business.”

  Roman opened his mouth to respond, but the words got caught in his throat, so he just nodded, staring at the box in his hands. 

  “Thomas told me we’d lost leads on Charisma’s case,” he said a moment later, his voice much quieter than even he was used to; Virgil glanced over his shoulder. “He told me I should stop searching for where she had been held - I just wanted to tell her family  _ something _ .”

  Virgil didn’t respond, but he watched Roman curiously. 

  “We’re lost, did you know that?” Roman said before he could stop himself; Virgil raised his eyebrows. 

  “Lost on what?”

  “The case- the  _ Oculi _ ,” Roman continued, albeit hesitantly - Virgil had never said anything to him about his ‘other clients’, so he hoped that secrecy applied to everyone he talked to. “There’s always another body and nothing to go with it, and Thomas isn’t doing  _ anything _ , we’re just sitting ducks while innocent people are being mutilated-”

  “Well, clearly he’s doing something,” Virgil interrupted, turning back to his computer and booting it up. “He asked for files on a couple people. He’s probably trying to find information as much as you are.”

  Roman gaped at the back of Virgil’s head. “What, you’re on his side? You’ve never even met him!”

  “No, but I’ve met you, and I know you can be a stubborn idiot.” Virgil ignored the offended stuttering behind him and continued, “Besides, aren’t you guys a team? Maybe try collaborating instead of going on your own rants to random people in their apartments.”

  “You’re not exactly random,” Roman growled, “and I’m not  _ ranting  _ about anything. I’ve tried to collaborate, he doesn’t listen to me-”

  “Try harder.”

  Roman nearly dropped the box as his hands tightened to fists again. He felt his face heat up, and snapped, “Fine, whatever. Thanks for the stuff,” before he turned on his heel towards the door, knocking it open with his hip without another word. 

  He passed the yellow kitchen and the little succulents lined up neatly at the window, the door cracked open, the empty tables in the living room, his mind whirling with something barely short of anger but veering towards straight up  _ hurt _ \- which was stupid; he shouldn’t take anything Virgil said at face value, the boy had the power of a newborn chihuahua, for all Roman cared - his face still hot. He’d just started to march out of the apartment when he heard a voice call out to him. 

  “Princey.” 

  He glimpsed over his shoulder; Virgil leaned against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest, lips pursed. Neither of them spoke for a moment, and Virgil’s eyes fell to the floor as he took a small breath.

  “You’ll find those people,” he said quietly. “Just… be patient, for once, okay? You’ll make it happen.”

  A burst of warmth blossomed in Roman’s chest and spread to the tips of his fingers as Virgil disappeared back into his office; his thoughts stilled, just for a moment, and he whispered to no one. 

  “Thank you.”


	3. Chapter 3

****

The ride home was relatively quiet for Roman. His music was off, as was the air conditioner, and he was left solely to the buzzing of his own mind. 

  Thomas was searching case files on his own. 

  The idea made Roman’s jaw clench almost involuntarily, but Virgil’s words made him slow down and consider just  _ why  _ Thomas would do such a thing; his first thought, of course, was that the man didn’t trust Roman (which, at that point, was almost understandable, not that he would admit that out loud)... except he definitely trusted Logan - arguably the most responsible and reasonable of all the team (again, not something Roman would ever vocally admit)  - and Roman was sure Logan had no idea of Thomas’ solo pursuits. So what, then? Did he know something that Roman and the others didn’t? 

_ Dumb question _ , Roman chided to himself, his grip tightening on the steering wheel,  _ of course he knows more than he tells the team. Any good leader knows what to keep and what to tell _ .

  At that, Roman paused. 

  Thomas was a good leader. He always had been, in Roman’s eyes, at least. So what, exactly, had pushed Roman over the edge with him lately? 

  He was stressed, he knew that, and  _ yes _ , he was frustrated, but… but maybe it was also the girl in the warehouse. Maybe it was her black hair, it was the freckles on her arms, it was the slant of her eyes and the way her hair was styled into that blunt bob and maybe -  _ maybe  _ \- it was all those things at once, invading Roman’s mind, seeping through cracks long since covered up and yet still susceptible to sprouts of dead girls in warehouses, and then his heart was racing in his chest and-

  A honk penetrated his thoughts, right before a truck nearly did the same to his everything.

  Roman swerved out of the left lane - when had he drifted that way? - as he made eye contact with the headlights of impending doom, the drawn out honk piercing the sanctity of his silence from all sides, angry drivers (though there were few on the road that time of morning) pressing down on their horns, and it sounded a bit too much like yelling for Roman’s sanity levels in that moment. 

  He had half a mind to just pull over right there and sit for a while, to process what the actual  _ Hell  _ just happened, but he was only a minute from HQ, so his hands remained on the wheel (and his eyes on the road that time). His car was silent once more, the honks ceased outside its windows.

  His heart still raced.

  “It’s a roulette wheel, now, is it?”

  The sharp remark reached Roman’s ears as soon as he stepped through the door to HQ, frustrated and practically fuming smoke on its own, and it took him another .3 seconds to trail it back to the bespectacled pair situated haphazardly on the couch. The stress of the last few days was alleviated from his shoulders, if only for a second, at the sight of them, Patton perched on the arm of the couch with Logan on the cushion beside him, eyebrows knit tightly as he scanned the paper before him. 

  “What’s goin’ on here, Spec Squad?” Roman snorted as he set the box from Virgil down on the coffee table before them, placing his hands on his hips with a smirk. “Trouble in paradise?” 

  “I wouldn’t call this paradisical,” Logan huffed, his pen clattering onto the table with a uneven  _ clunk _ . Roman raised an eyebrow at the chewed end. 

  “Logan’s just a bit, eh, frustrated, right now,” Patton ameliorated, laying a hand gently on the shoulder of the black-clad man beside him with a dimmed smile, before looking back to Roman. “The latest girl is a bit of a puzzle.” 

   “What do you mean?” Roman strode behind the couch to look over the pair’s shoulders at the document they’d been analyzing - there, strewn across the poorly-inked pages and bright red pen markings, was the girl from yesterday afternoon, her hair still fanned out beneath her head, skin pale and blackened. Roman ignored the flashes in his mind. “What’s wrong with it?”

  Patton’s gaze flickered to the pictures and he opened his mouth with a pinched expression, but Logan glanced at him once, eyes tired, and the other boy stopped before he’d even begun. 

  “She’s frostbitten,” Logan said instead, straightening his spine as he reached out to spread the pictures apart. They all displayed some gruesome close-up of the girl’s flaking body - Roman resisted the urge to gag, though Logan seemed unfazed, his eyes trained carefully on the photographs. “The other victims - every single one - has been burned to some capacity. Everything else is the same, the warehouse, the symbol on the note, the  _ eyes _ .” He shifted to a picture of those milky white eyes, unblinking now as they were when Roman found her, blank in all the meanings of the word. Patton looked down at his hands. 

  “It all matches up,” Logan continued, grabbing his pen from the table and chewing on the end idly, “except the frostbite.”

  “What about acid?” Roman asked; Logan raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t Arthur Long get killed with acid? That’s not burning.”

  “Arthur Loan,” Logan corrected sharply, “and that’s simply a  _ chemical _ burn.” 

  Roman exhaled through his nose, his mouth a taut line, and leaned closer to examine the files, a stray wave falling into his eyes as he squinted at the half-inked letters. “So what? They changed something up, big whoop.”

  “It is a big- _whoop_ , because they’ve followed a strict schedule, _until_ _now_. It doesn’t make sense.” Logan pushed the files away with a heavy sigh, his mouth pulling into a frown as the top page slipped over the edge of the table and fluttered to the floor. He dropped his head in his hands.

  “What did you get from Carrigan,” he deadpanned, voice muffled through his fingers. 

  “Some files, I think.” Roman stretched over the back of the couch to grab the box, sifting through its content lazily; between the smooth Manila folders was a small silver earpiece, a black ball that looked to Roman more like fuzz than anything, and what seemed to be a glorified walkie-talkie. “A few gadgets.” 

  “Gadgets?” 

  Roman nodded, jumping back as Logan snatched the box from his hands and stuck his arm elbow-deep in it. “What-”

  Logan pulled out the earpiece, holding it close to his face to examine the device. “A mic system?” He peeked back in, eyes flickering briefly over the walkie talkie before he dropped the piece between the folders and placed the box back on the table, gaze clouded. “Lovely.”

  Roman shared a glance with Patton. 

  “Is… something wrong?” Patton goaded, tilting his head at the stoic man beside him. 

  Logan pursed his lips; his knee bounced restlessly, but he noticed it and quickly stilled, his back straightening in the blink of an eye. “Of course not,” he said simply. “Nothing I can’t discuss with Thomas later.” 

  Patton frowned and opened his mouth, but Logan cut him off with a deep breath and a determined nod as he faced the pair before him. 

  “Back to the case,” he started; he threw a drawn glance at the files splain across the floor past the coffee table, a groan written on his face, if not in his voice. “Roman.” 

  Roman pushed his lips out in a pout as Logan just glanced pointedly between him and the papers. “Why must you make me do  _ everything _ ?” 

  But Logan didn’t budge, and Roman trudged around the couch to scoop the files from the floor; he started to hand it back to Logan, whose arm was already outstretched, but a poorly drawn symbol caught his eye before the paper could leave his hand. 

  “What’s this?” he asked, more to himself than anyone. The lilt of question must have caught Logan’s attention anyway; the boy was at his side in an instant, leaning over his shoulder - Logan was nearly an inch or two shorter than Roman, though his posture denied the difference - to inspect the object in question. 

  “That’s an eye, Roman,” he commented drily, a single, unimpressed eyebrow raised. “I assure you, you’ve seen them before.”

  “I’m  _ aware _ , but it looks weird.” Patton joined the pair at Roman’s other side to peek at the paper. Roman gestured to the image - it was a shaky, uneven eye, the pupil a rushed  _ C  _ within the  _ O  _ of the iris; it was the Oculi’s signature, but something about it seemed off to Roman. 

  “There’s four eyelashes,” Patton said easily.

  Roman frowned.

  “...Yes?” Logan’s eyes flicked between the drawing and Patton’s calm, blank expression. “Wonderful counting, Patton, but why, exactly, is that pertinent?”

  “The eyes have three.” Patton shuffled back to the coffee table, sifting through the folders and pulling out a small, crumpled piece of notebook paper, brandishing it like a gift to Roman and Logan. On it was a similar doodle, but steadier; the upper lash line was decorated with three, curving lines.

  “Oh,” Logan said after a moment. 

  “So what does that  _ mean _ ?” Roman grabbed the paper from Patton’s hand and held it next to the first, his frustrations growing quickly as he compared them. “What, is this whole death just a wildcard?” 

  The trio went silent as they stared at the markings, until Logan tilted his head to the side.

  “It might not be the Oculi at all,” he suggested. His eyes fell to the floor as he muttered softly to himself, though he made no move to grab the papers; instead, he strode back to the couch and collapsed onto the cushion, his chin resting on his hands. “Anyone who’s reported a crime scene before could have seen the symbol- and the mistakes would simply be a flaw of the memory- and the bank robbery, the missing teller, that might be completely unrelated to this, of course we would miss it- but then  _ why  _ frostbite? Surely that took time-”

  “Fourth degree frostbite takes four to five weeks to set in,” Patton offered automatically.

  “ _ Exactly _ , so who else in the city, or near the city, for that matter, has the technology and time to induce frostbite in the middle of Florida?” Logan’s hands danced uselessly in the air as he thought, his eyes focused on nothing in particular. “And the eyes were  _ white _ , so they clearly know the modus operandi-” He stood suddenly; Patton jumped, but Roman just raised his eyebrows. 

  “We need to find the witnesses of the last three cases,” Logan said. “That’s two months, correct? And we need to investigate further into the identity of this girl, and find out how long she’s been missing, if she’s been reported at all, and we need- Thomas!”

  Roman whirled around as the front door fell shut behind him; Thomas stood before them, an eyebrow quirked and a smile pulling at his lips. 

  “What’s all this?” he quips as he shrugs his coat off and hangs it on the rack beside the door. “Are you all having a party without me?” Patton grinned.

  “Thomas, may we talk?” Roman looked back to Logan to see his hands clasped calmly behind his back, all signs of his eureka moment smoothed away as he addressed Thomas. 

  Thomas glanced around at them before nodding slowly. “Of course. What’s up?”

  “In private.”

  Roman’s eyebrows shot up - Patton seemed equally confused, his smile all but faded completely, eyebrows knit tight.

  “Oh.” Thomas’ gaze fell to the box on the coffee table, his eyes lighting up briefly and dimming again as he turned to face Roman with a nod. “Thank you for the delivery, Roman,” he said curtly. 

  Roman just blinked as Thomas gestured Logan to his office. His thoughts flitted back to his ride home-

  “Thomas!” The team leader looked over his shoulder with raised eyebrows at Roman; the latter took a breath, trying to ignore Patton and Logan’s eyes on him as well as he said, quietly, “I’m sorry for my-  _ outburst  _ this morning. We’re all stressed, I know - I just… let it get to me.” Then, once more, “I’m sorry.”

  And Thomas smiled. 

  “It’s okay, Ro,” he said, his eyes sparkling. “I get it - thank you.” He let Logan into his office, and the door fell shut behind them.

  Roman felt like a weight’s been lifted from his shoulders and his stomach alike - his hands uncurled from the fists he hadn’t realized they’d formed, and he felt a hint of a smile tug at his lips. 

  He’d made things right.  Sure, it’s only one in a mess of every other broken thing right then, but one thing could always lead to more, and he was always ready to hope. 


End file.
